On Wednesday, the two newly freed members of Pussy Riot, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina, gave their first joint television interview, in Russian, to Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite who joined the anti-Putin opposition when protests against Vladimir Putin broke out last year. Sobchak, whose show airs on TV Rain, an independent Russian TV channel, flew to see the women in Krasnoyarsk, where, she said, she found it "impossible to breathe."

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were freed on Monday after serving more than half of their two year sentences in Russian prisons on charges of hooliganism for performing a "punk prayer" inside a Moscow cathedral. Sobchak, the daughter of Vladimir Putin's mentor, had some weird questions to ask. Here are the more ridiculous moments:

1. When Sobchak started her interview, with two people just released from jail, by asking: "You got out of prison famous and wealthy. So here's the question: how much is the Pussy Riot brand worth?"

Nadya answered: "I don't understand."

2. When Sobchak compared Pussy Riot to AK-47 designer Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died on Monday, and said: "We can bravely say Pussy Riot is a global Russian brand."

Nadya replied: "Talking about the 'brand' really isn't interesting."

3. When Sobchak repeatedly insisted it was "not fair" that Masha flew all the way to Krasnoyarsk, in Siberia, to see Nadya, and not the other way around.

"You made a huge hellish voyage, with a connection in Moscow, to go where Nadya is. Don't you think that's not fair?," Sobchak asked. Krasnoyarsk is a 4.5 hour flight from Moscow.

"I just got on a plane and flew - it's very simple," Masha said.

4. When Sobchak asked: "Doesn't it bother you that even people who support you don't like what you did?"

"We don't do things so people will like it, we do things to make people think, and I think we more than succeeded," Masha said.

5. When Sobchak asked if they were planning a protest to disrupt the Olympics, and after they answered: "Even if we had a plan, we probably wouldn't say so," Sobchak interjected with...

"What are you scared of?"

6. When she compared the women to John Lennon and Paul McCartney and they were like what.

7. When she compared them to Destiny's Child, and they were like WHAT.

8. When Sobchak asked Nadya if she wanted to go solo: "No one remembers Destiny's Child, but everyone knows Beyonce."

Nadya answered: "I don't like empty words."

9. When Sobchak asked if it was an example of sexism that Nadya got more attention because she is "pretty and thick-lipped."

After nearly two years in prison for singing a song about Vladimir Putin in Moscow's main cathedral, the women of Pussy Riot are no less defiant. Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have walked free from prison , and pledged to devote their energies to changing the political system in Russia and improving conditions inside its prisons.

Bareheaded despite the -25C cold, Tolokonnikova walked out of prison in the eastern city of Krasnoyarsk, flashing a victory sign to reporters waiting outside. "How do you like our Siberian weather here?" she asked, before shouting "Russia without Putin!"

Speaking to the Guardian by telephone shortly after her release from prison in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Alyokhina said that the pair - who were released as part of a wide-ranging amnesty announced last week - now plan to launch a project which will fight for the rights of inmates in the Russian prison system.

"We will be creating very special, colourful and powerful programmes to defend other innocent women in Russian prisons, who are being turned into slaves right now," Alyokhina said, adding that she planned to fly to Siberia in order to meet up with her band mate.

Tolokonnikova confirmed that the two women planned to meet soon to discuss the new project: "Russia is built along the same lines as a prison camp at the moment, so it's important to change the prison camps so that we can start to change Russia," she said. "Everything is just starting, so fasten your seat belts."

Alyokhina described her prison sentence as a time of "endless humiliations", including forced gynaecological examinations almost every day for three weeks.

She said: "I decided to become a human rights activist when I realised how easy it was for officials to make a decision and force women to be examined in the most intimate parts of their bodies. Russian officials should not stay unpunished, they cannot have this kind of absolute power over us."

Zoya Svetova, a member of the Moscow Public Oversight Commission visited Alyokhina in Moscow jail and confirmed that she had repeatedly been subjected to intimate searches.

"Inmates call it 'to be let through the chair' - it is a part of searching process. That is the most humiliating thing for any woman. I am not sure how many times Alyokhina went through it - I guess every time she left the jail to go to court," Svetova said.

Alyokhina, Tolokonnikova and a third band member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was released on appeal shortly after the guilty verdict, were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for their performance of an anti-Putin "punk prayer" inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in March 2012.

The two were released as part of an amnesty initiated by Putin and backed by the Russian parliament last week, which is timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Russian constitution. The women qualify because they have young children.

Alyokhina told Russian television that had she been given the chance, she would have turned down the offer of amnesty, and served out the remainder of her sentence, which was due to finish in March.

"This is not an amnesty, this is a hoax and a PR move," she said. Tolokonnikova called on western countries to boycott the Sochi Olympics in February in protest at the Russian regime.

Samutsevich also rejected the women's amnesty. "We were innocent when the Kremlin locked us up: it was not amnesty that we expected from Putin; we demand acquittal," she told the Guardian.

The amnesty also provides a reprieve for 30 Greenpeace activists, including six Britons, arrested aboard the Arctic Sunrise in September. They had been bailed last month but were stuck in St Petersburg waiting for a trial for hooliganism that could have seen them jailed for up to seven years. They will now be allowed to leave Russia, though the paperwork looks like it will not be ready in time for them to spend Christmas at home.

The release of Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova came just three days after another prominent prisoner, former oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was released after asking Putin for pardon and receiving it. Khodorkovsky described being woken up by prison guards in the dead of night, transferred to St Petersburg, and put on a plane to Berlin, where he spoke to journalists on Sunday.

Alyokhina said that her release from jail also felt "more like a secret special operation than an act of humanism". She was woken and told she had been released, but prison officials packed her belongings without letting her decide for herself what she wanted to bring and what she wanted to leave for other inmates. She was not given a chance to say goodbye to the friends she had made in the prison, and instead was led to a car and driven out of the prison. She was left at Nizhny Novgorod's railway station with her passport but no money, still wearing her prison overalls embossed with her name and prisoner number.

Alyokhina called friends at the Committee Against Torture, a local rights organisation, who came to pick her up. Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, one of the activists, said: "We were amazed that authorities would do something this ridiculous; secretly sneaking Masha out of jail so that she would not walk free to her family, friends and reporters waiting for her outside the prison walls with flowers."

Khodorkovsky did not fall under the terms of the amnesty but was pardoned separately by Putin, who made the surprise announcement last week. Putin's spokesman said there were no conditions attached to the pardon, which came after the country's former richest man wrote a handwritten letter personally to Putin. Khodorkovsky has said he may not return to Russia for some time, however. He says he will work on human rights issues but does not plan to go into politics.

Tolokonnikova was moved to the prison in Krasnoyarsk last month, after previously serving most of her sentence in Mordovia, a region known for its Soviet-era gulags. In the autumn, she went on hunger strike over conditions at the camp, and wrote an open letter describing slave-like working conditions and sadistic punishments. She has said that the prison in Krasnoyarsk was much more humane, and on her release she promised that she would work to get the head of Mordovia's prison service fired.

Samutsevitch and the other members of Pussy Riot are waiting for Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina to return to Moscow. "Pussy Riot exists, we are not going to stop being active and creative," she said.

2013-12-20

Parliament has finally passed the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill, criminalizing, outlawing and providing harsh jail terms for same sex relationships in the country.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009, a Private Members' Bill, was first presented to Parliament by Hon. David Bahati (NRM, Ndorwa West) in October 2009. It was one of the pending bills not considered at the end of the 8th Parliament, but saved and re-introduced for consideration by the 9th Parliament.

The Bill was then referred to the Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, which received submissions from among others the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Uganda Law Reform Commission, Uganda Human Rights Commission, Uganda Prisons Service, Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law and the National Association of Social Workers of Uganda.

Hon. Benson Obua Ogwal (UPC, Moroto), was excited as he moved the Bill for its Second Reading.

"Ugandans have been anxiously waiting for this Bill. This day will be good day for all Ugandans," he said.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009 seeks to establish a comprehensive consolidated legislation to protect the traditional family by prohibiting any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex; and the promotion or recognition of such sexual relations in public institutions and other places through or with the support of any government entity in Uganda or any other non governmental organization inside or outside the country.

The Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs said in its Report, "The Bill aims at strengthening the nation's capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family."

The Committee also said that there is need to protect the children and youth of Uganda who are vulnerable to sexual abuse and deviations as a result of cultural changes, uncensored information technologies, parentless child development settings and increasing attempts by homosexuals to raise children in homosexual relationships through adoption and foster care.

The Anti Homosexuality Bill provides a fourteen year jail term for one convicted for the offence of homosexuality; and imprisonment for life for the offence of aggravated homosexuality.

However, two Independent Hon. Sam Otada (Kibanda) and Fox Odoi (West Budama North) differed from their colleagues on the Committee arguing that the Bill is discriminatory and that homosexuality was already prohibited in other existing laws.

"What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom should not be the business of this Parliament. It is not right to have the state allowed in the bedrooms of people," they stated in their Minority Report.

The Prime Minister and Leader of Government Business, Rt. Hon. Amama Mbabazi, who also sought to defer the consideration of the Bill, argued that government was involved in negotiations over the proposed legislation.

"I was not aware that this Bill was coming up for debate. There are some issues on which we are still consulting," he said adding, "This is an important Bill that we need to pass with a quorum in Parliament."

The Bill, having been passed by Parliament, will be forwarded to the President for his assent before it can become law in Uganda.